14 DAY TRIAL // The news service and site from Ask.com has a pretty original approach to the old-time, old-school, traditional maybe, view of news. It has something out of Google News, but it also has a Digg spin, with people being able to vote the stories they like most and propel them higher in the rankings.
BigFactor is what the company decided to name its ranking mechanism and it comprises signals like freshness, impact, quantity of multimedia and some amount of related discussion. Category clusters are also included in the package, as well as a "Blogviews" section for highlighting latest posts from selected blogs. There's also an option to browse for news based on top Diggs or no Diggs, but frankly, I miss to see the point in this latest offering: if they're not news, why would you search for best articles? It's not an encyclopedia or a social network, it's only a site that should keep people up-to-date with what's going on around the world.
"Do you like finding many viewpoints, not just stories from the wire services? Do you like the idea of a mix of results of videos, images, articles, and blogs in one neat package? Do you like more effective search tools to find a specific story of interest? Do you like the idea of knowing which stories people are talking around the water cooler? If you answered 'yes' to any of these questions, then, we welcome you to Ask BigNews," is what their documentation pitches to new users.
Ask.com's service comes a bit late, as the news playing field is already split well between the three major players, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google - it's strange to see the Mountain View-based company trail - in this order, each owning 26 percent, 22 percent and respectively 9 percent of the pie.